The Friends of Israel Today Radio

April 27, 2019 | Interview: Dr. Randall Price

FOI Today Radio

Since going on air in 1991, our hope here at The Friends of Israel Today is to proclaim Jesus the Messiah to all people. We believe this program is unique because it highlights the fact that God still loves Israel and the Jewish people and that they still matter. How do we know that? Because God’s Word says it does!

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Interview: Dr. Randall Price

What’s in a word? Today we welcome Dr. Randall Price to the program to break down an often confusing word that we hear throughout the media, in books, and even in our churches. It’s the word: Palestine.

Dr. Price will explain the complexities of the word, its origins, and how we as believers in Jesus and friends of Israel and the Jewish people should think about it. The Bible tells us that words are important. And this is no exception. We hope you learn as much from Dr. Price as we did!

Steve Conover:Before we begin today, our beloved friend, teacher, theologian, and author Dr. Renald Showers went home to be the Lord earlier this month. I know I speak for anyone that has been blessed to know Rennie when I say, his teaching has had a direct, lifelong influence on our understanding of God and His promises to Israel.

Dr. Renald Showers was a gifted yet humble man that loved learning, and teaching about the God he loved. We ask that you keep his family in your prayers at this time.

You hear us talk about the land of Israel often on the program. But on the evening news, or in the newspapers, maybe even in your church, you might hear this same land called Palestine. Where does that word come from? And does it matter which word we use, Israel or Palestine? This is the Friends of Israel Today. I'm Steve Conover.

Chris Katulka:And I'm Chris Katulka. Today we want to bring some clarity to the term Palestine. It's such a sensitive term, it's political, it's theological, it's emotional. To bring some clarity to the word I'm excited to have Dr. Randall Price on the program. He's the founder and president of World of the Bible Ministries. He's also a distinguished professor at Liberty University and a famed archeologist.

Steve Conover:Chris, we look forward to that conversation. In the news, last week Israeli nonprofit SpaceIL achieved the first moon orbit with a privately funded spacecraft. But unfortunately, an engine problem dashed its hopes of safely landing the lander on the moon. The crash didn't end Israel's hopes. SpaceIL announced the plans for a Beresheet 2 mission with a statement from Morris Khan, the Israeli entrepreneur who put millions toward financing the first lander.

Chris Katulka:You know I watched the live feed of them trying to put the lander on the moon, and it was quite something to see. And it was amazing when they realized they lost the lunar lander, when they lost it they weren't dashed, they weren't done, you could sense this is only the beginning. And really, I think this space mission defines the Israeli spirit and mindset altogether. Israel doesn't shy away from obstacles. Instead they're known for taking obstacles, like this moon landing situation, as opportunities to grow, and to get better.

Israel might not have landed on the moon, or just not the way they thought they would get to the moon, but I'm confident we will see them on the moon soon.

Recently I was reading through a commentary on the Bible, a well respected commentary, one I would recommend to anyone. And I was reading through the commentary to prepare for a message, I noticed that the writer chose to call the place where Jesus lived first century Palestine. Now, I know that scholars often use the title Palestine to label Israel in commentaries, but I was surprised it was used by a commentary that I thought was well respected. And that's why I wanted to dedicate this episode to bring some clarity to this word Palestine. I think it's important to bring clarity to the word. And really, there's no better person to have on the program to bring clarity to this word Palestine than Dr. Randall Price.

Welcome to the program Dr. Price, thank you for taking the time to be with us.

Dr. Price:Thank you so much, glad to be here.

Chris Katulka:Dr. Price, before we get into the nitty gritty of this word, can you first give us an idea of the history of this word, Palestine?

Dr. Price:Well that is going to be somewhat controversial. No one really knows the exact origin. It's not used in the Bible, it's not used in the Quran. This is a term that developed in history, and has a long development. I would say that they're are two theories. One is just the use of the term. When you hear the word Palestine it sounds a great deal like the term Philistine, and that's because one of the terms, Philistine in Hebrew, in Greek Palestine, same term, is there. So that was used from ancient times in translations of the Bible, or in, let's say, ancient references to the land of Philistia, or the Philistine people. It didn't necessarily have reference to the land of Israel, but by extension may have come there. The Egyptians we know probably back sometime before Herodotus in the 5th century BC were using this term to refer to the land to the northeast of them, which would've been the Philistine territory.

And Herodotus, the ancient “father of history” so called, in the 5th century BC, refers to this area, now we would call Israel, as Palestine. But, when he refers to the inhabitants of the land he refers to them as circumcised, which is not something to be true for the Philistines, which were not a Semitic people but a sea people, came from the area of Crete or ancient Greece, somewhere like that.

There's another theory that is that the Greeks used ... they like word plays. And there was the word that is Palestinoi{sp?], it's a term that kind of sounds ... it's based on a term that means to wrestle or to contend with, something like this. And it was drawn from the idea that the Jews were called “God wrestlers”, back from the time when Israel gets its name from Jacob, who wrestled with God who was in a pre-incarnate form. And so the idea could be this, that it was simply a term to refer to the ancient Hebrews and the land of Israel by this Greek term, which was a word play.

So we don't really know. We know that the term took on a secular meaning when it was later in history used to, in a punitive way, to define the Jews by the emperor Hadrian, and so we're around the 130 something AD now. The Jews had revolted against the Romans for a second time. And this was put down by Hadrian. As a result, he renamed Jerusalem Aelia Capitolina after his own family Aelia, and then after the Capitoline Hills of Rome. So that was to change the name and association with the Jewish people and Jerusalem. And then he named the whole country Palestineo{sp?}, which is ... he thought of it as many Romans did, as simply lower Syria, or lesser Syria, something like this. But referred to it by the term used for the enemies of Israel in order to defame them, to separate them from their own history.

And that kind of ... because he was a Roman emperor, it comes into Roman sources, and we find it is a secular term used in distinction to something like Eretz-Israel, the Hebrew term used by the Jewish people, or Terra Sancta, the Latin term used by Christian people.

Chris Katulka:So when I opened up this book, Dr. Price, this commentary, and it was talking about Israel but it labels it as Palestine during the time of Jesus, are these scholars ... are they being historically accurate when they use the term that way?

Dr. Price:No, not at all. It's a misnomer. And I mean, my own Ryrie Study Bible that I use has our maps in the back of Palestine in the time of Jesus, all referring to ancient Palestine and the times of the monarchy, and it's ... this is simply because it's become more of a generic or common term. Many people think it's a, shall we say, an apolitical term, they can use that and not refer to the issue that Arabs would have, or Jews would have over the land. But of course that's all changed too, it's a very much a political term, and a theological term today.

Chris Katulka:If people are using that term though in books, Dr. Price, is there ever a good time for them to use the term, or an accurate time for them to use the term Palestine when they're talking about the history of the land?

Dr. Price:Never. Because frankly, when you come to the Bible, it's never used. You'll find it in the King James version in Joel 3:4. But there it refers simply to the coastal plain of Philistia. It's never used of a people, or a place other than that. When you come to the New Testament ... and of course in the Old Testament it's referred to as the land of Israel, strictly that. When you come to the New Testament, you find the same thing. You find it referred to, for instance in the gospels when you come to Matthew chapter two, again in Matthew chapter 10, we have references to Jesus and his parents leading the land of Israel to go into the land of Egypt. And when they come back it's from the land of Egypt to the land of Israel.

It's never referred to as anything else. Again, also in the Quran, when you talk about Islamic sources, they don't refer to it as anything other than the land of the Jews, they don't refer to is as Palestine at all.

Chris Katulka:Interesting. The term Palestine and Palestinian, we've been talking about it from a theological perspective, from a historical perspective, but really this word has kind of developed over the years and through thousands of years of history, especially coming up recently, it has come to identify a modern people, it's come to identify a potential future state that some people think, a Palestinian state, a Palestinian people. How did this happen? How did this term work its way through all the years to all of the sudden come to define a group of people, or a specific location?

Dr. Price:I think you'll probably find this coming out of British mandate in Israel. What happened was they used the Roman term, which they thought at that time was a term that was inclusive of the land itself. So while properly Palestine referred to the land of the Jewish people, the land of Israel, it then came to refer to all of the inhabitants of the land. So under British mandate, it's referred to ... we talk about Palestinian Jews, we talk about Palestinian Arabs, we have the Palestine Post, which they become the Jerusalem Post. We have the Palestine Philharmonic Orchestra, which is today the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. Simply referred to Jews living there.

The Arab then were also Palestinian, Palestinian Arabs. But when the partition happened in 1948, and the Jewish people got a state within that area, they became Israeli Jews, all the Arabs that lived in that state became Israeli Arabs. Everyone outside that were simply left with their own distinction. Even then they didn't take the term Palestinian, they took either a tribal identification such as Bedouin. Or they took some national distinctions, such as Jordanian, or Syrian, or Turk, or Egyptian, whatever it might be.

Probably the first time we see this term appear in distinction is with the Palestine Liberation Organization, which comes around in 1964. But then you realize they use the term Palestine not of themselves, and not of an Arab entity, but of what they considered an occupied area. And they referred to Palestine as Israel, because this was the land they wanted to liberate. At that time, things like the Gaza Strip belonged to Egypt, and the West Bank belonged to Jordan, and the Golan Heights belonged to Syria, so they didn't have reference to those areas.

And when you come to something like the Six Day War, even the Yom Kippur War, you will not find the word Palestinian or Palestine used in those documents. You won't even find them in Resolution 242 and 338 from the UN Security Council, which dealt with the resolutions of these wars. And the issues was that because they were not dealing with Palestinian claims, these were the countries of Egypt, and Jordan, and Syria, again, who are seeking to reclaim the areas that the Israelis had taken, which were of course from ancient days part of Judea and Samaria.

Then when you come probably as late as 1993, I would say, you have something where because of conditions that are happening just before the Camp David Peace Accord, just at the same time that Jordan ... there was a cold peace made with Jordan, a treaty, there's a distinction of a people that consider themselves marginalized. That all before that, Jordan called itself Palestine. And in fact, Yasser Arafat in 1970, what we call Black September, tried to conquer Jordan, which he said he was conquering Palestine. King Hussein referred to Jordan as Palestine. But this has all since changed for political reasons. Now we have revisionist history that says Jews didn't come into the country til the 1880s, that there was never a Jewish history there, that the Bible is a fraudulent document, that ... And basically countries like Jordan have lent their support to that.

Chris Katulka:Yeah.

Dr. Price:Up until 1994, a little beyond, they were the custodians of the temple now in Jerusalem. Now they have backed off and let the Palestinians take some of that.

Chris Katulka:We're going to come back from a break, and I'm going to ask Dr. Price the story of what archeology is playing in really helping define what the land of Israel should be called, so be sure the stick around.

Steve Conover:It's hard to believe this month, April, the Friends of Israel celebrates having been on air since 1991. And Chris, you've been our host now for the last four years. In this short time, our reach has grown to more than 500 stations, as well as a growing podcast audience reaching places like Israel, Guam, India, and the Faroe Islands.

Chris Katulka:Steve, we believe that this program is so unique because it highlights the fact that God still loves Israel and the Jewish people. That Israel and the Jewish people still matter, because God's word says they do. The reason we're passionate about this program is because there are really no other programs that are doing exactly what we're doing.

But friends, I have to be honest, this program is dependent on your faithful giving.

Steve Conover:The point we want to make, the point we need to make, is we cannot continue this program without your help. We are a faith based ministry depending on the support of faithful listeners just like you. When you give a gift of $25.00 or more to the program, you will receive Dr. Elwood McQuaid's updated and expanded book It Is No Dream.

Chris, given the purpose of the Friends of Israel Today radio program, can you tell our listeners why this book matters to our ministry, and how it will influence the lives of our listeners?

Chris Katulka:You know, I really hope that our listeners out there are like us, and I'm sure they are, they love Israel, they love the Jewish people. I think that's the reason a lot of our listeners are attracted to the Friends of Israel Today. And I can think of no other book that would be better for our listeners to have in their hands as a gift for donating to our ministry than Dr. Elwood McQuaid's It Is No Dream. This is really an entire picture of Israel from beginning to end, a Biblical look, a prophetic look, and also what's going on today in modern Israel. How did Israel come to be? And the updated version, Steve, is just phenomenal. The picture quality, the paper quality, all of it from beginning to end, it's a beautiful gift I think our friends will really like.

Steve Conover:And for your gift of $25.00 or more, you will receive the book It Is No Dream. You can contact us at 800-345-8461 Monday through Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. eastern standard time. Again, that's 800-345-8461, Monday through Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. eastern standard time.

You can also give at FOIRadio.org. That's FOIRadio dot O-R-G. When you call, mention the promo code DREAM. The promo code is DREAM.

Chris Katulka: Welcome back everyone, we are speaking with Dr. Randall Price. Dr. Price, I'm wondering with all of your expertise over the years, and years, and years that you've been doing archeology in Israel, how has archeology defined what the land of Israel should be called? You were talking about earlier in the previous segment about the idea of revisionist history. How is archeology helping us understand more of what the land of Israel should be called?

Dr. Price: Yeah, archeology's become a tool used by both Palestinians and Israelis to make some type of facts on the ground. Right now, we have the Palestinian Authority demanding all of the finds in the West Bank be ... that remain archeologically, be returned to them, including the Dead Sea Scrolls. Which is odd because the Dead Sea Scrolls were excavated originally under the Jordanian government when they had control of that area. And the rest of the Dead Sea Scrolls that aren't in Israel are in Jordan. But the Palestinians are trying to create a history for themselves in that land, so they say, "These are all Palestinian artifacts."

When we talk about the issue of Jerusalem, they claim that no archeological discovery in Jerusalem has verified any Jewish claim to one stone in that country. Now that's just wishful thinking. When you talk to real scholars among the Palestinians, and they have their own Palestinian history of archeology, there's Ite University. In the West Bank they have a Department of Antiquities in Gaza. So they know better, but they have to hold to a political line.

The fact is though, when we excavate, and I've been excavating in the West Bank for 20 something years, at the site of Qumran, where the Dead Sea Scrolls originated. And I remember a number of years ago a student from Berkeley came, he was doing an interview for a magazine, Atlantic Monthly on this, and he came asking, "Where are the Palestinian artifacts that I was digging up?" And I had to say, "Well, there are none. We have things from the Roman period, we have things from the period before that, the Second Temple period, which is entirely Jewish. And every one of these things relate to Jewish culture, Jewish religion. We have bones we find among other things, we have butchering marks, so they considered kosher laws, we have things related to Jewish ritual, which is involved here. We have Hebrew inscriptions. But we have nothing related to any other people."

Chris Katulka:Mm-hmm.

Dr. Price: And so that ... and that's the case across the country. You have very clear, defined strata which have occupational levels and show the people that lived there, but there are no Palestinians, because this is a recent invention, politically ... well, I say the term has been used a long time in a secular way to distinguish it from Biblical Jewish or Christian terms. It just has no real currency in terms of history and fact.

So archeology can be used to ... as it's trying to be used, by some, to disprove claims of Israel. But the actual archeology itself affirms them. It simply says there's no other people here.

Chris Katulka:Dr. Price, I really appreciate you spending time to come and to share with us from your expertise, your knowledge. You are a gift to us in many ways here at Friends of Israel. Can you let our listeners know how to get in contact with your ministry, World of the Bible Ministries?

Dr. Price: Sure. I just in closing want to say one thing. There is a Palestinian people today, and a Palestinian entity. It's recent, it has no connection with past history, but we shouldn't ... we should not refer to the Palestinian people as Palestinians or Palestinian Christians, or things like this. Even though they don't have an origin that they claim.

Now my ministry is called World of the Bible Ministries. It's WorldoftheBible.com. Located down in Texas, but we have on our website all of the available information and data that can be downloaded. We try to educate through that website, as well as provide resources for further study, and then our tours to Israel and many other things.

Chris Katulka:That's fantastic, Dr. Price, thank you for clarifying the term Palestine, the history of the term Palestine. We know that there's a lot of levels, there's the emotional level, there's the political level, there's the theological level, all of these levels, and I love how at the very end you boiled it down. That there are a Palestinian people, God values them, that's the most important thing as well. That God values them. Thank you for reminding us of that, Dr. Price.

And also reminding us that the history points to the fact that the land of Israel is a Jewish land, that there is a Jewish history there. Thank you for joining us, sir.

Dr. Price: My pleasure.

Steve Conover:Thanks for joining us today. Chris, what an informative discussion between you and Dr. Price. What would be the big takeaway from what we learned about the word Palestine?

Chris Katulka: I think the big takeaway is understanding that yes, it is a very sensitive term, but we also have to understand history and theology. We have to know when to use the right term, we have to know that we shouldn't just be calling Israel Palestine, because really that carries a lot of connotation with it. So I think we need to be careful with terms we use, but also understand a lot of the sensitivities as well.

And for our listeners, I just want to say, if these things matter to you, if the issues of Israel and the Palestinian issue matter to you, and truth really matters, I want to encourage you, again, please donate to our radio program, The Friends of Israel Today. And just remember, for right now, we have a special promo going right now. If you give a gift of $25.00 or more to the program, you will receive Dr. Elwood McQuaid's updated and expanded book, It Is No Dream.

You can contact us 1-800-345-8461. That's 1-800-345-8461 during business hours, Monday through Friday, eastern standard time. And you can also donate at FOIRadio dot O-R-G. Don't forget to mention promo code DREAM.

Steve Conover:Chris Katulka is our host and teacher. Tom Gallione produced today's program. It was co-written by Sarah Fern, Jeremy Strong composed our theme. I'm Steve Conover, executive producer. The Friends of Israel Today is a production of the Friends of Israel Gospel Ministry. We're a worldwide Christian ministry communicating Biblical truth about Israel and the Messiah, while fostering solidarity with the Jewish people.

Music

The Friends of Israel Today and Apples of Gold theme music was composed and performed by Jeremy Strong.